Separating beauties from beasts

Nail Art Tutorial: Penguin Nails

My hands are usually cold during this time of year, so I thought it would be a great idea to do Penguin Nails! (Also, one of my followers on beautylish requested that I do penguins sometime. I was happy to oblige!)

This look is extremely easy to do, but the finished design appears more complicated.

Like I always say, it’s about patience more than it is about skill. Don’t be intimidated by nail art!

(Check out my tutorial where I walk you through it with step-by-step written instructions and photographs.)

I really hope that you’ll try this design. And if you do, let me know how it goes!

I chose China Glaze Blue Island Iced Tea because it had a frosty, wintry feel to it. Plus it was light enough so that the black from the penguin would still stand out.

Although I used 3 coats, you could actually get away with just 2 coats.

Tip: You actually don’t need to paint your entire nail with this colour…only part of the blue shows, so consider saving your polish and painting just the top third of your nails.

Allow this to dry a bit for about 10 minutes before proceeding to the next step.

3 coats of China Glaze Blue Island Iced Tea

Step 3: Start the Penguin

Cover the remaining two third of your nails a black. Don’t worry if they’re not all even. When the design’s finished, any imperfections won’t be as noticeable. Plus penguins come in all shapes and sizes anyway.

Step 4: Make It Snow

Add a few drops of white polish onto your piece of foil, which you’ll use as a palette. (You can also use a plastic bag or anything that won’t absorb the polish or let it leak. Try not to use paper, as this wastes a lot of polish.)

Dip your dotting tool, the end of a make-up brush, a toothpick, or any other tool you have into the white polish. Add random dots over the blue sections.

Step 5: Add the Penguin’s Belly

Using a white polish, paint a semi-circle onto the bottom. You may need to go over this again to get it more opaque.

Step 6: Start the Eyes

Using your dotting tool (or other tool), dip it into some white polish on your piece of foil and add two dots per nail.

Step 7: Add a Beak

To help the beak stand out, I suggest using a yellow like I did or an orange. You could use a grey, but I just think a yellow is cuter.

This is how I got the shape of the beak. I dipped a very small dotting tool into the polish on a piece of foil. I started to make a dot where the base of the nose should start. Then, without lifting my tool, I dragged it over to the right side. The line naturally tapers.

(If you feel more comfortable using a nail-art brush for this, use it. I just found it easiest to use a dotting tool because it makes it look clean even if you have shaky hands.)

Step 8: Give Your Penguin Sight

Dip your dotting tool into some black polish on your piece of foil and carefully add a black dot on the white ones you created previously. Consider putting the pupils in different spots so that they’re looking around or looking at each other!

Step 9: Add a Top Coat

Is it cold where you are now? Do you think that penguins are cute or strange animals? Did you watch Happy Feet or March of the Penguins?

Edit: WOW! Guess what? China Glaze retweeted my penguin nail art to their followers! That made my day! I love companies that are so supportive.

I need to try this! Although, I might be a bit too matchy-matchy with our holiday decor.. See, we have an inflatable penguin (with a scarf and santa hat) on the lawn and another penguin (glittery and wearing a santa hat) in the house! Once retailers put all the decor on sale, we plan on getting more friends for our lonely inflatable penguin outdoors. Bonus points that I absolutely loved Happy Feet (the movie) when it first came out! I still haven’t seen the 2nd as sequels aren’t always better than the original and I fear it might ruin the first for me.

Thanks! Nail art always just takes patience more than skill. I’m always trying to deconstruct ‘complicated’ designs and show people how easy they are to do. Hopefully more people whip out their polishes and try it out.

This design is sooo cute. I actually just did this manicure before typing up this comment. I had to wait for each layer to dry so it took a bit longer than usual. It was a fairly easy design but as always, it was hard to paint my right hand because I’m right hand. Now my nails are adorable and I can’t stop staring at them. Some of my friends were over while I painted my nails and I showed them your blog. They love your blog and said they were going to check it out when they got home. They were also upset because they missed the giveaway.

Mary!! This is soo cute I love penguins you make it look so easy! I am trying so hard to grow my nails if I ever succeed I will be trying some of your nail art Amber recently posted: Holiday 2011 Look Series featuring Wet n Wild

Glad you like them. And maybe the penguins are already making their way over to you. They’re no longer on my nails…sniff sniff…and I miss their little eyes looking up at me. *Walks into a pole* Okay, okay…eyes straight ahead! Got it.

These are SO cute. I really, really want to make them, but I don’t have yellow nor white nailpolish, and also I don’t think my nails are long enough
I’d probably go with just making the penguins.
And I just realized that my black is still missing.

Hey, I love your tutorials, they’re so easy to follow and they look great. If only I were half as talented.
I had a go at this one myself and the design turned out perfect, however I had an issue with the nail polish. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s cheap polish or another reason, but it seems to smudge easily and I don’t even have to put much pressure on it and the polish will slide. This is even with a top coat on. The polish doesn’t seem to have dried solid if that makes sense, it’s squishy =/ I think this may be a polish issue, but if you could enlighten me or give me any tips on how to prevent it that’d be great.
Keep up the great work

I’m glad that you’re enjoying my tutorials – I do them because I really want to encourage more people to try out designs that may otherwise intimidate them. A lot of times, designs aren’t nearly as overwhelming as we think they are. And sometimes you just have to try one design and then realize that you ARE good at it.

Rosie, the fact that you even tried some nail art is a lot more than what a lot of other people attempt, so GOOD FOR YOU! That’s the step in the right direction. (And thank you for the compliment – really, though, it’s more about just patience than it is about skill. That’s what I think.)

Hmm…what top coat are you using? I’m using Seche Vite. It’s possible that other top coats may not work as well. It could also be that maybe you need to wait longer for the layers of polish to dry before adding your top coat. And does your design stay squishy for days or just on that first day?

Oooooohhhhh….my goodness! Sooo much better than Happy Feet….Happy Nails! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t smile when they see penguins…and now I can’t wait to try this on me and see if I can STOP smiling with these guys on my fingers. I better hurry, spring is around the corner…maybe I will turn down the thermostat while wearing these. Thank you so much for being talented, patient and sharing!! Love, love your blog!

You know what? Even if yours came out straight, I bet it still looks good and that your penguin looks cute! Please don’t think that you have to recreate it 100% the same. The great thing about freehand nail art is that no two manicures are exactly the same!

I just added a little more pressure on the brush when I painted it left to right.